


Dilaudid

by businessghost



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Spoilers for up to S7 Ep2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9432236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/businessghost/pseuds/businessghost
Summary: Reid strugles with the loss of a friend





	

**Author's Note:**

> hey so im angst trash and like, 5 years behind everyone else in this fandom. many thanks to my beta-reader, the power ranger/ninja/mermaid

It is done with the precision of a professional. A doctor. Spencer knew how to follow the steps, he had memorized them. He had understood the theory behind them before he ever dealt with the tangible reality.  
Tie a tourniquet around the biceps, turn the tight knot to press against the brachial artery, let your arm hang, let blood pool. Study the veins in your antecubital region. Remember which ones you’ve invaded recently, try and leave them be. Minimize the damage now, so you can continue the damaging longer. Fill your syringe with precious poison. 30 tick marks up the side of a needle made to carry something better and cleaner than this. Locate your target, slide the needle underneath your skin, push the plunger.  
He had forgotten about the other steps. It had been a long time. In his bedside drawer rested his 4-year coin. He used to store his antidote there.  
Swallow your guilt, summon the image of a lost friend to your mind, tune in to the need that is ever-present, asking for oblivion. Brace yourself, push feet in scholarly dress shoes against the floor, legs against your bedframe. Pick a vein recklessly, because the damage doesn’t matter. Use up the cautious time you saved long ago. Lay the metal against your skin, feel the anaesthetic cold. Grit your teeth, exhale in a short burst, push the plunger.  
Fall away into nothing. This is what Tobias lusted after. This is how you avoid death, become immune to pain.  
And the next steps? Wake up hours later, wearing rumpled dress clothes, feel the aching in your neck, muscles, legs, arms. Stare down at yourself, down at the secrets in your bedside drawer, try to chastise yourself, feel the shame and fail to heed it. Collect your instruments; save them for another time; accept that there will be another time. Rise unsteadily, stumble to your bathroom mirror, prod at purple bruises under tired eyes. Skip breakfast, drink too many cups of coffee. Maybe it can take you back to functionality. It’s the only thing you can keep down after a bender like this, anyway. Fall back into your old patterns, wear long sleeves and never roll them up; avoid Morgan’s gaze; try to read, let your eyes flit over the words. Absorb nothing.  
Take your burdens off of JJ’s shoulders, boil them in a spoon with fine white self-loathing. Swallow your tears, stop bringing them to her. Stop them entirely. Trace the writing on your sobriety coin with your fingers. Imagine bringing it to Prentiss’s grave; imagine collapsing in front of the headstone, dry heaving. Ignore the voices in your head saying, She wouldn’t have wanted this. Deny yourself. How could you know what she’d want? You didn’t even know her.  
And when you see her, alive, still breathing, feel it all at once. The sting of betrayal, the shame of being so weak, the bruises fading on your arms, the headache buzzing behind your eyes from a short dry spell.  
And when you tell JJ, your confidante through all of this, that you might’ve done dilaudid again, that she had left you susceptible to that danger, but you hadn’t, let the lie harden your heart. Go home with your broken ends. Follow the steps. Tourniquet, vein, push, fall. Forget about another lost friend, the one who watched you suffer and sob and did nothing to help you, though she could have fixed everything.  
Wake up, dress clothes rumpled, ignore the knock on your apartment door. Listen to it swing open anyway, admitting one of few with a spare key. Try to feel panic, shame; feel exhaustion instead. Let go of the thoughts of hiding what you’ve done, what you’ve been reduced to. Avoid her gaze, staring in at you from the doorframe. Hear something small and metallic hit the floor, covered in dirt from months of exposure on Emily’s false grave. Curl in on yourself, face anything but her. Blow the powder at her, make it dragon’s breath; lay there and feel the tears you held inside for months. Let her hold you; never look at her face.


End file.
